Ep 02 Stillness as an Undoing A Conversation with Jeremy Breckbill

Welcome to Remembering Forgotten, where we return to what the world taught you to forget. Today, I'm joined by Jeremy, a dear friend of almost 20 years, and someone who lives in 2 worlds at once, a lifelong martial artist and a deeply skilled technical communicator whose clarity cuts through noise. 2 humans in a private conversation held in a public space. meeting what's true and inviting you to remember yourself through it. So Jeremy, before we begin, what is stillness for you?

Stillness is cutting out a lot of the background noise in your brain, uh, the I should, um, What do people think about me? Um, all this kind of, uh, anxiety, worry, things like that. Uh, and just listening, just really just kind of being calm. Um, I think that's, that's probably it in a nutshell.

Is that something that was always clear to you, or, or did that kind of, um, you know, evolve?

Absolutely, uh, evolved. And fairly recently, maybe even just a couple years ago, it was this kind of idea that, um, you know, if people pray or reach out to the universe or however, whatever works for you, I thought if you're not quiet, you If you're not listening, how are you going to hear anything? That you have to be still, be quiet, listen to get an answer. Because then people will just ask, ask, ask. But if you're not making space for that, you're not going to hear any answer, probably.

I remember the conversation we had many, many years ago where you said something like, if we always talk, How can, you know, God, whatever you want to call it, actually talk to us?

Right?

If we don't listen, how could we hear?

Right, exactly.

Right. See, this is interesting. I have many conversations, as you know, and when I ask the question, what is stillness? Quite often it gets connected with meditation. Why do you think that is?

Meditation, I, as I understand it, is almost, that's the purpose of it, to quiet the chatter, to focus on something other than the other day and kind of take you out of your normal everyday experience and slow you down, calm you down. And, you know, The, the higher a concept gets, the, the less we're able to really capture it with words. And we can say the same— we can say different things and mean the same thing. So stillness, quiet listening, it's all really the same to me.

That's why I love to have these conversations about stillness, because it is so interesting what people allocate with stillness. And quite often it is that people say, that's what I experience in meditation, right? And you know me quite well. And for me, stillness couldn't be further away from what we're just talking about. Because, you know, we're both avid meditators. And when we meditate, we go into silence. We go into what we call stillness. But stillness for many people is void of action. Does that resonate somehow? Like when you meditate, you go to become still, you become quiet, you become calm, right?

Mm-hmm.

But when I say to people, oh, I personally see stillness as a coherence between The thought, your mind, and the heart. And if these are in coherence, that then opens the channel to my soul. New email.

And then that

is good. We have a live, live conversation. Feel free to turn it off. Yeah, because, you know, that is definitely a sign that our conversation is not scripted.

Yeah, not scripted. That's— yes, that's my wife. I put her on my phone to give me different alerts. So—

And non-edited is perfect. Non-edited. And you see, the thing is, like, when I realized that we are living in an extremely noisy world, and when we go into meditation, it's almost an antidote of noise. Which is what? Silence?

I don't know. It's a good question.

Let's talk about that for a moment. Let's think about that for a moment. Because it is not stillness.

Well, it is kind of purposeful, isn't it? That's the whole idea of meditation. And it's, it is a doing.

And you know how hard it is for many people, right?

Oh, absolutely. It was so hard for me.

To even sit for a couple of minutes.

Yeah.

Like, I remember when I started out, 3 minutes, that was torture.

Oh, yeah. Oh, it was agonizing. It was an eternity.

Yeah. Because the thing is, like, we are trying to sit still and we are not connected basically to anything. So sitting still for a couple of minutes when you're so used to noise, Literally a fish out of water.

Mm-hmm.

So if you look at it from this standpoint, and you know, you know me, I'm quite a contrarian as you are. So for me, it's fun to look at certain concepts that are well known in society and literally question that stuff, which doesn't mean I do not believe in what I'm saying. I just have to question it. Literally. So if you look at having noise all the time, then traveling to India, for example, and going into an ashram, what is it I'm going to do there? I'm going to be still. But is that stillness?

Hmm.

And I think that is such an important thing because you see, When I think back to when my meditation path evolved, I suddenly actually got into conversation with something. And I only recently learned what it is. It is my higher intelligence.

Mm-hmm.

Or other people call it soul. So it suddenly wasn't anymore that I was just sitting still and being quiet. But I suddenly went into a conversation while I meditated. And I believe that's the difference for me between stillness and what happens when you usually normally meditate. Because think about that, you are in a noisy environment, you're able to go into stillness, you are able to put your thoughts, which are chatter and musts and shoulds and, you know, don'ts and whatever, and put that into coherence with your heart, which is basically almost like a soothing element. And when that coherence then takes place, you suddenly hear this wee little voice That usually has been silenced. So this is something which I always love when I'm on calls with people, when I suddenly realize that probably even their blood pressure drops.

Oh, yeah, certainly.

Their pulse drops. Because, you know, that's what people say to me, like, like, can you explain stillness?

Mm-hmm.

I smile and say, you're experiencing it right now. You're right. But when you think about how did you come before the call, you must have, even if on a Sunday, you must have had your thoughts. With you, I know you're quite in the stillness anyway. But somebody else who just came from meetings or came from from business coming to the call, it suddenly all drops. Because what happens in stillness is all the noise stays outside.

Mm-hmm.

And this is what I love about stillness. Because, you know, the show is called Remembering What the World Taught You to Forget. So there is this system which basically wants us to be busy all the time, which wants us in a chatter all the time. So if you look at it, what actually happens when that happens is it literally prevents us to remember there's more. And as you know, we talked about that for so many times. that people today, they're asking more and more, is this it? Or is there more to my life?

Right.

So when you heard me ask this question for the first time a couple of years ago, how did that make you feel when you heard, or is there more? What was like the first connotation you had with that?

I mean, it definitely made sense to me because I think I had asked that question with maybe not articulated the same way before.

Mm-hmm.

Um, it wasn't so much a question, it was really more of a surety. It's like, I know there's more than this, what I'm doing. Mm-hmm. And the question is kind of, how do you get there? For me at the time.

So

it's like, all right, uh, got the woman of my dreams, we're married, that's good. We got the house, that's, that's good. Got it, you know, got a job that pays the bills, okay, that's good. Uh, you know, making progress in some of my, uh, outside the job interests, okay, that's good. Still a bit of a void, you know. And, uh, you know, when you had said there's— just a minute ago you said there's so much noise and chatter and demands on our attention. I think it's accurate to say that's truer now probably than it was ever at any other time in human history because so much of— so much business is conducted trying to get our attention in terms of social media. You know, social media, it only gets monetized if it's got people's attention. So there is this very very lucrative machine trying to grab your attention all the time and, and competition for that attention. So yeah, absolutely. Um, but getting back to the question of, uh, more, I think my question at the time was, yes, there is more to this. I, I kind of intuit that. What is it? And I, I'm glad that at the time I knew it wasn't buy more stuff, have more status, uh, have a, you know, some title next to my name or whatever like that. But, uh, yeah, it was—

The question remains, right? What is the more?

Yeah, it is. The question is there. I, I kind of glimpse it sometimes, but yeah, it's, it's still there.

Yeah, because you know what's interesting? Remember when I told you the story of the guy who, through a call, introduced me to his friend slash client and said, look, Markus, this guy just called me a couple of days ago and he told me that he had sold his company and his own shares, a billion, the B dollars on his bank account. And this guy asked me, Markus, what do you believe his state of mind was in? And I said, as a layperson, I would say he was elated. He was happy. But as who I am, as what I do, I believe it was the opposite. And he said, Markus, he was sobbing.

Hmm.

He was crying like a baby. And I said, do you think, do you understand why? He said, it's kind of hard to understand. So had he not told me later on, I don't think I would understand. It's lack of purpose.

Yeah, that would've been my guess. Yeah.

It's lack of purpose. So think about this guy literally had half a billion dollars on his bank account. So basically, he had generational wealth. I don't know for how many generations. Probably not all his money he had, to be honest. He had probably a bit more. So think about a person like this who literally can afford anything he wants, and sets his mind to, gets to the point where his soul whispers. And I think it was actually more than a whisper, to be honest. I think it was more like a bullhorn. saying, God, is this it? Or isn't there more? And I believe at that point, Jeremy, the soul actually said, you know what, there is more. There is more. And you cannot accumulate more than you have already. Stop it. Thank you. Stop it, like Eberhard.

Yeah.

That's what it, that's what it comes down to. That's what our soul does. It says, stop it. And what's interesting, I said to him, what did you do? He said, Markus, I just listened. I said, were you able to help him? He said, no, just listened. Then, okay, what happened next? Oh, he sent me a ticket. He flew me in to LA. So what did you do there? He stopped. I listened.

That

was it. And then he asked me, you know, do you think you could help him? I said, no, but maybe listening to him helped him.

Yeah.

But you know, for how far?

Not long. Fix it.

Not long.

No,

not long. Because you see, the thing is, like, it's almost every human being believes that the more is outside of me.

Right.

And it makes sense. Like, how the heck can I enter myself, right? We're always talking about the body cult. We're talking about everything that's going outside of me. Relationship, everything is outside of me. More material wealth outside of me. Guess what? All the meditation trips and everything is outside of

me.

I believe those things should be gateways where the actual answer lies. Remember the story I told you once, where the gods had the challenge to hide this thing that had to be protected until the human being was able to access it?

Mm-hmm.

When the one god said, hey, no issue, let's put it up on Mount Everest, the highest mountain of the world. The other one said, have you heard of Reinhold Messner? He goes up there without even an oxygen tank. So no good. The other one said, let's put it into the lowest sea. The other one said, have you heard of Jacques Cousteau? He has this little U-boat where he can go to the lowest point of the sea. No good. Okay, so let's put it at the end of the world. You mean the Amazonas? You know, people, They just went everywhere already. And understandably, they got quite frustrated until the chief god said, you know what, guys, there is only one place we can hide it, where the human will not reach before he's or she's ready. And I believe that's what the more points to.

Hmm.

It's inside.

It's

inside. And, you know, when I understood, Jeremy, that after having been a business consultant and executive coach for 20 years, that I was actually doing more bad than good because I was helping, you know, the more in the outside.

Right.

But then, as you remember, when I came to the US a year ago and I asked those 2 questions, Why am I here? And why am I here? One of them was why in the US and one is why I'm alive. I suddenly realized, gosh, probably at least 90% of the conversations I had led to, is this as good as it gets? Or is there more? So even with people who say, you know what, We need a new recruiting strategy, or I need to learn how to motivate my teams. Those conversations didn't last very long because I said, look, there is something deeper than just numbers. There is a relational dynamic.

Mm-hmm.

And that always led to stillness. So when I understood that the actual issue is the noise, and what then happened as it changed is when I had those conversations with people. And you know what, I just recently realized, Jeremy, that probably I've been on that path for my entire career, maybe my entire life, that when I met people, that everything just calmed. Mm-hmm. that everything outside became nonexistent. And now to really understand, gosh, that's exactly what people are after. So please.

No, just what you just said there, everything else became nonexistent.

It's clear.

Yeah, it's the shutting out of the nonessential in the moment, I think, is what it is. And I was also thinking about, you know, you talked about meditation. not quite being synonymous with stillness. I think it's a tool to help people get there, but I think it kind of becomes the Buddha on— and, um, because the stillness is a not doing, and as I said, the meditation is doing. At the same time, um, I was— I might even still have been a teenager. No, I might have probably my early 20s. I realized that doing the forms in martial arts, the repeated patterns, those were moving meditation. And that wasn't really probably the, the original purpose of it, but that became that for me. When you're just— your focus is solely on that.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, what was in the news that day, uh, what you got to do when you get home, uh, you know, what you owe to friends or whatever, all that just drops away and you're just There. I mean, it's, it's, I guess, another way of saying being present, maybe. And maybe presence and stillness are at least related, maybe not necessarily the same thing. But yeah.

If you look at them, at your martial artist career,

yes,

how does that relate to stillness?

You don't reach peak performance without stillness, which sounds, you know, uh, oxymoronic because peak performance in martial arts is quite dynamic. You're moving quite a bit, but it feels— I mean, you're, you're generating massive amounts of power, but it feels effortless.

Mhm.

And that's not something that is solely physical. It's not even something that's solely mental. It really— maybe you might say spiritual. I mean, you have to have everything aligned and be in stillness, and then, then you get this peak performance. I, uh, real quick story. I was in— the first time I experienced this, I was in college. Um, I was training with a guy who was, uh, he would, he would trade off I'll say his name, Javier Sanchez. Javier would trade off with a guy, um, Gene Lopez, about who was national champ in our weight class. One year would be Javier, one year would be Gene, and then Gene just kept winning. But anyway, I was training with Javier, we're sparring, and you know, there'd be no way I'd ever beat Javier, so he's taking it easy on me kind of training. I had been chit-chatting with a friend before and not being worried about, oh my gosh, I'm going to spar Javier in front of everybody. I'm going to look dumb. He's going to make me— I'm going to look so ineffective. And what if I do this? And what if I do that? None of that was there. My mind was on the conversation a couple of minutes ago. Don't remember what it was. And then I just realized that I was I saw a look of surprise on Javier's face of like, how is he doing this? And, and I thought, don't freak out, you'll lose it. You know, just stay in this space. And I wouldn't say I beat him, but I, you know, I think I, I surprised him. I did a lot better than anybody, myself included, expected. And so that was my first little taste of that. And when I got that, then I would That became a goal to kind of get back there. So.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

You know, the word that is very hard to put onto what you just said is you entered coherence.

Yeah. Well, yeah.

And your outer was absolutely in unison.

Yeah.

And when that coherence actually takes place, That's where terrorists can be Javier's.

Yeah, I think so. And literally, it kind of makes me think of some people that might try to throw a punch by just stiffening up their entire arm. But of course, one muscle is this, one muscle is that. And if you stiffen up both, it's like stepping on the gas and the brake in your car at the same time. You have to have that, uh, synchronicity of this relaxes, that tenses up at the right time. Yeah. So it's very similar to that. I think

I would say this pretty much, um, exemplifies what stillness is all about.

Hmm.

Because when you do something and coherence doesn't result in it, It wasn't stillness,

right?

Because when you actually go into stillness, it's not something you do, you actually, you become stillness. That's when coherence results.

Yeah, I really think of stillness as an undoing.

Remember what he told about?

It's a pretty fascinating conversation. I think

it's remembering the forgotten.

Right, exactly.

Remembering what the world told you to forget. That's what it comes down to. So with that, Jeremy, I have one question I would love to leave you with. So if you could translate stillness into a message anyone could apply, whether in writing or in life, what would that look like?

Well, I think yeah, the undoing of things. It is a. I think the phrase undoing for me really seems to be working well because it's it's not a purposeful. I gotta go get still. It's a is a relaxing of things. So it's not doing, but it's also undoing as you would. you know, been saying, uh, a lot of the stuff that we've been told is important and, um, we have to do. And, you know, you need to worry about how you look to this person, and, and are you, you know, being good to your mother? It might— I mean, he'd be good, but, uh, the thou shalt's part of it is, is part of it. Is, uh, dumping off the owl shouts, the undoing of that. I think

it's beautiful. So thank you for this conversation, Jeremy. And thank you. May you carry the stillness you met here into whatever comes next.

And you too.

Thank you. So this was Remembering the Forgotten, where we return to what the world told you to forget.